Emergency medical situations often call for swift action on the part of physicians, emergency medical technicians, nurses and other medical personnel. These situations call upon the use of devices, such as catheters and accompanying tubes, which carry necessary drugs and/or fluids into the body of the patient, as well as the transportation of the patient to a hospital, or from one place to another within a hospital. In the rush to apply the necessary medical treatment in such circumstances, tubes and/or wires which are connected to accompanying catheters or other devices become vulnerable to accidental pulls or snags when caught by equipment or personnel who are trying to provide medical treatment under less than ideal circumstances. Even slight displacement of these tubes or wires can disturb the site of catheter insertion or device attachment, resulting in lost time and treatment delay while medical personnel replace the particular device.
Previous attempts to address this problem have involved complicated and expensive straps employing buckles, threaded loops, and stitching to provide strap-type anchors for holding a catheter tube in place. Difficulty in use and manufacture can make such devices cumbersome and expensive to use, resulting in precious time and money wasted. In addition, some previous devices placed undue reliance upon tape to secure the device to the body part, as wet skin or other adverse conditions often prevented such tape from functioning properly. Moreover, previous devices often failed to address the costs associated with their disposal, in light of the potential exposure of the device to blood or other bodily fluids during use. A need therefore exists for a device which is easy to use, inexpensive to make, easily disposed of, and effective to secure a catheter tube to a body part or other object and to prevent unintentional displacement of an accompanying catheter. This invention is deemed to satisfy this need in a highly efficient manner.